While it may be interpreted by some as a childish act of
frustration, Pavano demonstrated that there is some passion left on the team as
it finishes April in a nasty tailspin.Part of Pavano’s personal problems extend for a
noticeable decline in ground balls (dropped from 52% to 43%) and a hike in
walks allowed (up from 1.5 BB/9 to 2.8). Also, after leading baseball the past
two seasons with inciting the most out-of-zone swings, he has regressed in this
area too, now down to 27%, below the league average. (It should also be noted
that his overall zone rate has fallen as well.) For Pavano, who is not to be
mistaken as a strikeout pitcher, this represents somewhat of an issue. What
this means is opponents aren’t fishing for those off the plate pitches, bouncing
into grounders and are much more likely to take a walk.It might be that opposing teams have figured out his
approach. Considering Pavano has been one of the premier pitchers at getting
strike one, it is not surprising to see that hitters this season have teed off
on his first pitch. Heading into yesterday’s game, opponents have gone 8-for-16
(.500) with a double and a home runs (.875 slugging) but have little success in
other counts.

According to BillJamesOnline.net’s accounting system for
team base running, the Twins are -6 run below average on the base paths. While
that number is far from the worst team (that honor goes to the Los Angeles
Angels at -22), the Twins’ redemption is there impeccable stolen base rate
(100%) given them a better number than they likely deserve.Consider this: In the situations described by Gardenhire
in the article – failing to score from second – the Twins have failed miserably
this season. Dating back to 2002, when the Twins had a runner on second and an
opportunity to score, they did so 60% of the time. This season however, they
have had 31 opportunities to score from second but successfully converted just
9 times (15%). Without much in the way of power, the offense needs to become
more aggressive on the bases in those situations in order to score runs.

As someone who is fond of using data, I’m genuinely
curious to know what these “diagrams” showed.My first thought was ‘have the Twins decided to use Pitch
F/X?’ If they did, I’m not certain that there is enough evidence to support
that his release point is any more or less inconsistent from last year. He
moves all over the rubber and has a release point that drifts in a wide array. Furthermore,
Pitch F/X doesn’t necessarily show where the ball was “released” but rather it
picks it up a few feet from where the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand (it can
provide some insight but this needs to be considered when analyzing the data).
So I doubt that they wound up using Pitch F/X info.

From researching last Friday’s TwinsCentric
post on Liriano’s inability to keep his fastball down, I mentioned that he
is finishing higher in his mechanics and thus the ball has a higher likelihood of
remaining up in the zone. It seems to have plenty of overlap in what the Twins
were attempting to show Liriano and – while the team may be miserable to watch
right now – I’ll be looking for any changes in this area following Tuesday’s
start in Chicago.

Speaking of mechanics, Justin Morneau’s swing has been
off this season. He has been opening up far too much and pulling out with his
upper body resulting in turning over a pitches middle-away rather than drive
those offerings to center like he did a year ago.

On Friday, the Royals were able to pick this flaw apart. In
fact, Kansas City was so confident in their ability to retire Morneau, that
they left right-handed reliever Blake Wood in to face him while the tying runs were
on second and third in a 3-1 game. Wood struck him out and stranded the two
runners. In general, Morneau’s swing looked awful as he pulled off on every
pitch. According to Ron
Gardenhire, Morneau has been working hard in BP to correct this and his
homer on Sunday may be early signs that the hard work is paying off.

Take it with a grain considering defensive metric need a
large sample size to read accurately, however Span has seemingly played with a
bit more confidence in his second season in center. At Fangraphs.com,
Span is the only starting center fielder who has successfully converted all of
the balls in his zone into outs leading to a baseball-best 1.000 revised zone
rating. Additionally, he has tracked down 16 more balls out of the zone for the
fourth-best mark in MLB.Last year, there were numerous incidents of Span
deferring to his neighboring outfielder instead of tracking the ball himself.
This season, he has seemingly taken charge as the captain of the outfield and
has aggressively pursued flies.

While there were plenty of undertones regarding his
clubhouse presence in addition to his soaring earning potential that possibly
led to Orlando Hudson not returning to the Twins after the 2010 season, the
message sent by the front office was that the team need more speed in the
lineup. According to Twins
general manager Bill Smith back in March:

"Hardy and
Hudson did very well for us. They helped us win another division. When we went
with them, we lost team speed. That was one thing we were looking to add. If we
can get Casilla and Span and Nishioka creating havoc on the bases, then have
the bombers coming up behind them, we're going to score a lot of runs."

Offensively, Hudson is struggling some at the plate but
getting on base at a decent enough clip and is managing
to provide that “havoc” for San Diego. While at an age where long-term
contracts would be ill-advised, perhaps the team’s assessment of his speed potential
was slightly misguided.

About OtB

"Parker Hageman is the Michael Cuddyer of Twins bloggers -- not the flashiest guy out there, but a solid everyday player. Hageman produces spot-on analysis ... relying on in-depth stats and lots of charts. He takes a sober, performance-based view of players, letting others fall for a player's heart or his leadership skills in the clubhouse. Hageman is one of the four pillars holding up the Star Tribune's TwinsCentric blog."